Anyone know of good places to start looking up my family Genealogy online or at Library?

I have sources and a plan that includes a brief tutorial that is actually interesting.

In genealogy, we document everything. Too many budding genealogist get frustrated and quit because they copied something from someone else’s tree that was improperly documented and later learned they were researching the wrong ancestor. There is an excellent tutorial for those who are new to family research at http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ; I recommend it to everyone starting out in genealogy. After you complete the tutorial, the following is a basic plan and generally only requires the tools that you already have like your computer and Internet service provider.

The person you know about is you, so, start with your birth certificate, which has your parents, and then ask your parents for copies of their birth certificates, which will have your grandparents on them. Then if you grandparents are living, continue the process. At some point, you will experience a problem depending on when you grandparents or great grandparents were born, in that; birth certificates did not exist before the early 1900s. Therefore, you need to get back to 1930 with personal records because those types of records are not available to the public for 50 to 100 years depending on the jurisdiction in which they are held.

By copying or ordering these documents, you have gone to relatively little expense and you have three generations plus yourself and you have it documented with primary documents. That will give you 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and 8 great grandparents names to start researching. Now, you can use death certificates, marriage records, census records, immigration records, church records, court records and many other sources to research your ancestry. Your public libraries will most likely have both Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest.com free for anyone to use while at the library and with a library card you should be able to use Heritage Quest at home.

Another free online resource is the LDS/Mormon site, which has many free online records at http://www.familysearch.org/ and original documents on their pilot site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=0 . In addition to their online records, they have the Family History Centers where you can go for help with research and look at microfilm and they only charge nominal fees if they have to order something specifically for you . Find a location near you on their website and call to check hours of operation. http://www.familysearch.org/ .

Additionally, USGenWeb is another free online resource at http://www.usgenweb.org/ . This site is packed with how-to tips, queries and records for every state and most counties within those states. Then, there is Rootsweb at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ a free site hosted by Ancestry.com where you can search for surnames, post queries on the message boards and subscribe to surname mailing lists.

Also, do not forget to check Cyndi’s List at http://www.cyndislist.com/ and ProGenealogist top 100 genealogist websites at http://familytreemagazine.com/article/101best2009
both of these sites have many links for both free and fee based sites.

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